Roll Bars part 1.

Part 1 !! I’m not sure how many parts this will end up in as I haven't been looking forward to this bit, and keep putting it off.

The main issue is that the mounting points for the roll bar legs are now beneath the floor of the boot. Add to that, externally there is little to reference on the rear deck to mark where the roll bars should come through the body. The only way to calculate where to cut the holes in the rear deck is to transfer the reference holes from where they bolt onto the chassis up through the floor of the boot and then continue up onto the underside of the rear deck before cutting holes for the roll bars legs to fit through which have to be no more than 5mm out of alignment. I'm going to largely follow the method used by Simon and Steve on their sites, there's a few bits I haven't quite got my head round yet but in thinking it through have come up with my own solution.

First off, I cut down some 12mm studding long enough to bolt through the roll bar mounting points and reach up to the underside of the boot floor. I then drilled a 6mm hole into the end of each piece of studding before bolting them into place. With some rough measurements taken from underneath I guesstimated the position of the studding in relation to the inside of the boot floor and drilled some small exploratory pilot holes, using each as a reference from underneath until I had located the approximate centre of the studding and then opened this hole out with a Dremel to just a little larger than 12mm.

The plan is now to use a hole saw from within the boot, using the 6mm hole drilled in the centre of the studding as a guide for the pilot drill, and drill the clearance holes through the boot floor for the lower half of the roll bar legs. All of the exploratory holes I drilled were within the diameter of the hole saw and were through material to be removed anyway. A picture would probably help…



Here you can just see the guide hole drilled into the end of the piece of studding beneath the floor



Ahh, foiled, my new handy dandy right angled drill attachment wasn't big enough to take the holesaw arbour so I had to compromise with a ratchet and socket.



One down, five more to go. I need to buy some new holesaws as I don't have the sizes I need so I'll probably have to wait until the weekend to make any more progress.